Pogo was the title and central character of a long-running (1948-75) daily
comic
strip created by Walt Kelly. Set in the Georgia section of the Okefenokee Swamp, Pogo often engaged in social and
political satire through the adventures of the strip's funny
animals. Since Pogo occasionally used slapstick
physical humor, the same series of strips could often be enjoyed by young
children and by savvy adults on different levels. Kelly's strip earned him a
Reuben in 1951.

Publication history

The characters of Pogo the possum and Albert the alligator
were created by Kelly in 1941, for issue #1 of Animal Comics, in a story titled
Albert Takes The Cake.[1]
Both were created as comic foils for a young black boy named Bumbazine, who
also lived in the Swamp. Kelly found it hard to write for the human boy,
preferring to use the animals to their full comic potential, and eventually
phased Bumbazine out. Pogo quickly took center stage, assuming the straight
man role that Bumbazine had occupied.

In 1948, Kelly was hired to draw political cartoons for the short-lived New York Star
newspaper, and decided to do a daily comic strip featuring the characters he
had created for Animal Comics. Pogo debuted on October 4 of
that year, and ran continuously until the paper folded on January 28,
1949. On
May 16 of
the same year, the strip was picked up for national distribution by Post-Hall
Syndicate, and ran continuously until (and past) Kelly's death from diabetes in 1973. George Ward and Henry Shikuma were among
Kelly's assistants on the strip, Shikuma worked with him from 1958 until
Kelly's death, then worked with Kelly's wife, Selby Kelly, and his Walt's son
Stephen until the strip stopped syndication in 1975. While Walt's assistant,
Shikuma inked some backgrounds, and parts of the Sundays where there wasn't
complicated motion.[2] (Selby did not work
on the strip until after Walt Kelly's death.) Selby said in a 1982 interview
that she decided to discontinue the strip because newspapers had shrunk the
size of strips to the point where people couldn't easily read Pogo.[3] The Los Angeles Times revived the strip under the title
Walt Kelly's Pogo in 1989, written at first by Larry Doyle and Neal Sternecky, then Sternecky
alone. After Sternecky quit in March of 1992, Kelly's son Peter and daughter
Carolyn produced the strip, but interest waned and the revived strip ran only a
few years.

Characters

It is difficult to compile a definitive list of every character that
appeared in Pogo over the strip's 27 years, but the best estimates put the
total cast at over 300. Kelly would create characters as he needed them, and
discarded them when they ceased to be funny, or had served their purpose. Most
characters were at least nominally male, but a few female characters appeared
regularly. Kelly has been quoted as saying that all the characters reflected
different aspects of his personality.

Even though most characters have full names, some of them are more often
referred to only by their species. For example, Howland Owl is almost always
called "Owl"; Beauregard is usually called "Hound Dog"; Churchy LaFemme is
sometimes called "Turtle" (or "Turkle," in Swamp-speak).

Permanent residents

Pogo Possum: an everyman (or every-opossum), is one
of few major characters with the sense to avoid trouble. Though he prefers to
spend his time fishing or picnicking, his kind nature often gets him reluctantly
entangled in his neighbors' escapades. He is often the unwitting target of
matchmaking by Miz Beaver. He has also been forced to run for
president, against his will, multiple times by the swamp's residents. His
kitchen is well-known around the swamp for being fully stocked, and many
characters impose upon him for meals, taking advantage of his kind nature.

Albert Alligator, enthusiastic and loyal, dimwitted and irascible, is
often the comic foil for Pogo or the fall guy for
Owl and Churchy. Having an alligator's voracious appetite, Albert would often
eat things indiscriminately, and was accused on more than one occasion of
eating another character. Even though he has been known to take advantage of
Pogo's kindness and generosity, he is ferociously loyal to Pogo and will, at
softer times, be found scrubbing him in the tub or cutting his hair.

Dr. Howland Owl is the swamp's self-appointed resident scientist, professor,
doctor, explorer, witch doctor, and anything else he thought would generate
respect for his knowledge. In his earliest appearances, he wears a pointed
wizard's cap. Thinking himself the most learned creature in the swamp, he once
tried to open a school but had to close it for lack of interest. Actually he
was unable to tell the difference between learning, old wives' tales, and use
of big words. Most of the harebrained schemes come from the mind of Owl.

Churchill "Churchy" LaFemme: a turtle. His name is
a play on the French phrase Cherchez la femme. Though superstitious to a fault (for
example, panicking when he discovers that Friday the 13th falls on a Wednesday
that month), Churchy is usually an active partner in Howland's schemes. Churchy
may have once been a pirate, as for the longest time he wore a
buccaneer's hat and was sometimes referred to as "Captain LaFemme." He enjoys
composing songs and poems, often with ridiculous and abrasive lyrics and
nonsense rhymes.

Porky Pine: a porcupine, a misanthrope and cynic. Porky never
smiled in the strip (except once when the lights were out). Pogo's best friend,
equally honest and with a keen eye both for goodness and for human foibles,
Porky has two weaknesses: his infatuation for Miss Mam'selle Hebzibah and a
complete inability to tell a joke. Porky also had a doppelgänger, his "kissing cousin" Uncle Baldwin, who wore a
trenchcoat to hide his bald backside. Uncle Baldwin usually tried to grab and
kiss any female in the panel with him. Most of the females (and more than a few
of the male characters) fled from the scene when Uncle Baldwin arrived.

Beauregard Chaulmoogra Frontenac de Montmingle Bugleboy (usually just
called "Beauregard"; scion of the Cat Bait fortune): a hound dog and occasional
policeman, he sees himself as a romantic
figure, often narrating his own heroic deeds. He occasionally appears with
"blunked out eyes" playing "Sandy" along side Pogo or Albert when they don a
curly haired wig impersonating "Lil Arfing Nanny". Beauregard frequently will
wear a trench coat, fedora and squint his eyes when impersonating a Dick Tracy
type detective.

Miss Mam'selle Hepzibah: a beautiful
Frenchskunk modeled
after Kelly's mistress, who would later become his second wife. Miss Mam'selle
was long courted by Porky and others but rarely seemed to notice. Sometimes she
pined for Pogo. She speaks with a heavy French dialect and has a tendency to be
overdramatic. She is flirty but proper, and enjoys attention.

Miz Beaver: washerwoman for the Swamp, and best friend to (and
occasional match-maker for) Miss Mam'selle. A traditional mother, uneducated
but with homespun good sense, who "took nothin' from nobody".

DeaconMushrat:
the local man of the cloth, the Deacon speaks in blackletter, and his views are just as modern. He is
typically seen haranguing others for their undisciplined ways, attempting to
lead the Bats in some wholesome activity (which they inevitably subvert), or
reluctantly entangled in the crusades of Mole and his even shadier allies; in
either role he was the straight man and often wound up on the receiving end
of whatever scheme he was involved in. Kelly described him as the closest thing
to an evil character in the strip.[citation needed]

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (sometimes Bemildred): bats, hobos, gamblers,
good-natured but totally innocent of any temptation to honesty. They admit
nothing. Soon after arriving in the Swamp they are recruited by Deacon Mushrat
into the Audible Boy Bird Watchers Society. Their names (a play on the song
title Bewitched, Bothered and
Bewildered) are rarely mentioned; often even they cannot say for sure which
brother is which. They tell each other apart, if at all, by the patterns of
their trousers. (According to one of the bats, "Whichever pair of trousers you
put on in the morning, that's who you are for that particular day.")

Tammananny Tiger: a political operator, named in allusion to Tammany Hall. He typically appeared in election years to
offer strategic advice to the reluctant candidate, Pogo. He first appeared as a
companion to P. T. Bridgeport.

Molester Mole (née Mole MacCarony): a nearsighted and xenophobic
grifter. Obsessed with contagion both literal and figurative, he was a prime
mover in numerous campaigns against "subversion," and in his first appearances
had a habit of spraying everything and everyone with a disinfectant that may
have been liberally laced with tar. Modeled somewhat after Senator Pat McCarran
of the McCarran-Walter Act.

Seminole Sam: a fox and traveling con man, he often attempts to swindle Albert
and others, for example by selling bottles of the miracle fluid H2O, and occasionally
allies with darker characters such as Mole.

The Cowbirds: Two freeloading birds that have a penchant for moving into
Pogo's hollow tree home anytime he is out traveling. They grift any food and
valuables that cross their path and have been known to keep company with a
pirate pig that has more than a passing resemblance to Khrushchev.

Reggie and Alf: Two cockney insects that wander around bickering and
looking for cricket matches.

Wiley Catt: a sinister, wild eyed bobcat hillbilly that smokes a corn cobb
pipe, carries a hangman's noose or shotgun and frequently hangs out with
Sarcophagus MacAbre and Seminole Sam.

Sis Boombah: a matronly cheer leading hen who is a gym coach and fitness
enthusiast as well as a close friend to Miz Beaver.

Pup Dog: a "lil dog chile" who frequently wanders off and gets lost. Being
so young he has a hard time figuring out how to bark and often resorts to
yelping "Ralph, Ralph, Ralph"!

Bun Rabbit: an enthusiastic rabbit with a drum and majorette hat who
appears often with P. T. Bridgeport and likes to broadcast news in the manner
of a town crier.

Lil Mouse: an unnamed mouse with a bowler hat, cane and cigar who
frequently pals around with a snake, Pup dog, a flea or Albert. He sometimes
takes the name "F. Olding Munny" but only when Albert is posing as a
Fakir/Swami.

Snavely: a friendly snake who pals around with the Lil Mouse or a group of
angle worms that he is training to be cobras or rattle snakes.

Roogey Batoon: The undeniable pelican who made the Lou'siana purchase and
is a part time snake oil salesbird.

Picayune: a talkative frog that is a "free han' pree-dicter of all kinds
weather an' other social events - sun, hail, moonshine or ty-phoonery".

Satire and politics

Kelly used Pogo to comment on the human condition, and from time to time,
this drifted into politics. Pogo ran for President (or was nominated by his
friends, although he never actually campaigned) in 1952, 1956 and 1960. Kelly
used these fake campaigns as excuses to hit the stump himself for voter
registration campaigns, with the slogan "Pogo says: If you can't vote my way,
vote anyway, but VOTE!"

Simple J. Malarkey

Perhaps the most famous example of the strip's satirical edge came in 1953,
when Kelly introduced a wildcat character named "Simple J. Malarkey",[4] a caricature
of Senator Joseph McCarthy. This showed significant courage on
Kelly's part, considering the influence the politician wielded at the time and
the possibility of scaring away subscribing newspapers.

When a newspaper from Providence, Rhode Island issued an ultimatum,
threatening to drop the strip if Malarkey's face appeared in the strip again,
Kelly had Malarkey throw a bag over his head as Miss "Sis" Boombah (a Rhode
Island Red hen) approached, saying "no one from Providence should see me!"
Kelly thought Malarkey's new look was especially appropriate because the bag
over his head resembled a Klansman's hood.

Malarkey appeared in the strip only once after that sequence ended, his face
covered by his speech bubbles, standing on a soapbox shouting to general
disinterest.

The Jack Acid Society

In the early 1960s, Kelly took on the then-powerful ultra-conservativeJohn Birch Society with a series of strips dedicated
to Mole and Deacon's efforts to weed out Anti-Americanism (as they saw it) in the Swamp, which
led them to form "The Jack Acid Society." ("Named after Mr. Acid?" "Well, it
wasn't named before him." The reference is to John Birch, who was killed 13 years before the
creation (in 1958) of the organization that bears his name. The name is an
obvious pun. The Jack Acids modeled themselves on the only real Americans:
Indians. Everyone the Jack
Acids suspected of not being a true American was put on their blacklist, until
eventually everyone but Mole himself was blacklisted. One of the
longest-running storylines in the strip's history, the strips were collected by
themselves (with some original verse and text pieces) in the only Pogo
collection not to include the main character's name in the title: The Jack Acid
Society Black Book, (the poetry collection Deck Us All With Boston Charlie also
lacked "Pogo" in its title) and one of only two books (the other being Pogo:
Prisoner Of Love) to comprise a single storyline.

Later politics

As time went on, other popular figures found themselves caricatured in the
pages of Pogo. By the time the 1968 Presidential Campaign rolled around, it
seemed the entire Swamp was populated by P.T. Bridgeport's "wind-up
candidates," including representations of George Romney, Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, and Robert F. Kennedy. One of the cleverest may have been
his portrayal of Eugene McCarthy as a white knight tied backwards on
his horse, spouting poetry. Retiring President Lyndon B. Johnson was portrayed as a befuddled
long-horned steer; earlier, he had been portrayed as a centaur named
"The Loan Arranger" in the Pandemonia series.

When the strips from this time were collected in Equal Time For Pogo, the
publisher wanted to edit out the strips including Kennedy's doppelgänger, but
Kelly insisted on keeping them in to pay honor to the slain candidate.

In the early 1970s, Kelly used a collection of characters called the Bulldogs to
mock the secrecy and paranoia of the Nixon Administration. The Bulldogs
included doppelgängers of J. Edgar Hoover, John
Mitchell, and Spiro Agnew. Always referred to, but never seen, was
"The Chief," who we are led to believe was Nixon himself.

J. Edgar Hoover apparently read more into the strip than was there.
According to documents obtained from the FBI under the Freedom of Information
Act, Hoover had suspected Kelly of sending some form of coded messages via
the nonsense poetry and Southern accents he peppered the strip with. He
reportedly went as far as having Government cryptographers attempt to
"decipher" the strip.

When the strip was revived in 1989, Doyle and Sternecky attempted to
recreate this tradition with a GOP Elephant that looked like Ronald Reagan, and a jackalope
resembling George H. W. Bush. Saddam Hussein was portrayed as a snake, and then
Vice-President Dan Quayle was depicted as an egg, which eventually hatched
into a roadrunner-type chick that even went "Veep!" "Veep!"

Backlash and fluffy little bunnies

Kelly's use of satire and politics often drew fire from those he was
criticizing, and their supporters. Due to complaints, a number of papers
dropped the strip while others moved it to the editorial page.

Whenever he would start a controversial storyline, Kelly would usually offer
alternate strips that papers could run instead of the political ones for a
given week. Sometimes labelled "Special" or with a letter after the date to
denote that these were alternate offerings, Kelly referred to these strips as
"The Bunny Strips," because more often than not he would populate the alternate
strips with the least offensive material he could imagine, fluffy little
bunnies telling stupid jokes. (Nevertheless, many of the Bunny Strips are
subtle reworkings of the theme of the replaced strip.) As if to drive home
Kelly's point, some papers published both versions of the strip. Kelly would
tell fans that if all they saw in Pogo were fluffy little bunnies, then their
newspaper didn't believe they were capable of thinking for themselves, or
didn't want them to think for themselves.

The bunny strips were usually not reproduced when Pogo strips were collected
into book form. A few alternate strips were reprinted in Equal Time For Pogo,
and the 1982 collection The Best of Pogo.

"We have met the enemy...."

Probably the most famous Pogo quotation is "we have met the enemy and he is
us." More than any other words written by Kelly, it perfectly sums up his
attitude towards the foibles of mankind and the nature of the human
condition.

"Specializations and markings of individuals everywhere abound in such
profusion that major idiosyncrasies can be properly ascribed to the mass.
Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we
will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly.
It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits
become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation
and the desire to join battle.

"There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things
which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then,
that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny
trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be
us.

"Forward!"

The finalized version of the quotation appeared in a 1970 anti-pollution
poster for Earth Day, and was repeated a year later in the strip reprinted
here. The slogan also served as the title for the last Pogo collection released
before Kelly's death in 1973, and of an environmentally-themed animated short
Kelly had started work on, but was unable to finish due to ill health.

In 1998, OGPI ("Okefenokee, Glee, and Perloo, Incorporated," the corporation
formed by the Kelly family to administer all things Pogo) dedicated a plaque in
Waycross, GA commemorating the
quote.

Personal References

Walt Kelly frequently had his characters poling around the swamp in
flat-bottom boats. Invariably, they would have a name on the side reflecting
some personal reference of Kelly -- the name of a friend or political figure,
the name of a newspaper, or almost anything else.

Swamp-speak

The predominant language in Pogo is referred to by many as "swamp-speak." It
is, essentially, a rural, Southern U.S. English dialect with creative spelling
and pronunciation. The dialect and phonetics used are very similar to those
used by Mark Twain in his novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Kelly had a good ear for language, and often created new words to fit his
characters (note some of the Quotes, below), including an exclamation, "rowrbazzle."

Other media

Pogo quickly branched out from the comic pages into other media, although
not quite to the degree of many contemporary comic strips. Some attribute the
comparative paucity of material to Kelly's pickiness about the quality of
merchandise attached to his characters.

Music

An LP called Songs Of The Pogo was released in 1956,
collecting a number of Kelly's verses (most of which had previously appeared in
Pogo books) set to music by both Kelly and orchestra
leader Norman Monath.

While professional singers provided most of the vocals on the album, Kelly
himself contributed lead vocals on two tracks: Go Go Pogo (for which he also
composed the music), and Lines Upon A Tranquil Brow. He also contributed a
spoken portion for Man's Best Friend.

Songs Of The Pogo was released on compact disc in 2004 by Reaction Records (Urbana, IL),
including previously unreleased material.

Animation

The first, Pogo's Special Birthday Special, was produced by animator
Chuck Jones in honor of the Comic Strip's twentieth
anniversary in 1969. It starred June
Foray as the voice of both Pogo and Miss Mam'selle. The general consensus
is that the special, which aired first-run on NBCMay 18, 1969, failed to capture the charm of the comic strip
and is generally dismissed by fans.[1]

Walt and Selby Kelly themselves wrote and animated We Have Met the Enemy,
And He Is Us in 1970, largely due to Kelly's dissatisfaction with the Birthday
Special. The short, with its anti-pollution message, was animated by hand, and
some have blamed the strain of the project on worsening Kelly's health and
hastening his death three years later.[citation needed] The storyboards for the
cartoon formed the first half of the book of the same title.

Neither the Birthday Special nor I Go Pogo is currently available on
home
video or DVD. Selby Kelly had been selling specially-packaged DVDs of We Have
Met The Enemy... prior to her death, but it is currently unknown whether or not
further copies will be available.

Figurines

Plastic figurines of Pogo, Albert, Beauregard, Churchy, Howland Owl and
Porkypine were packaged with soap by Proctor and Gamble in 1969. Walt Kelly was
not satisfied with the initial sculpting, and using plasticine clay sculpted
them himself.[5]

Dell Publishing Company comic books featuring Pogo

The Complete Pogo

In February 2007 it was announced that Fantagraphics Books would begin publication of The
Complete Pogo, a 12-volume series collecting the complete chronological run of
daily and Sunday strips. The first volume in the series was scheduled to appear
in October 2007, but delays have pushed its release until sometime in mid 2009.
[6]

Awards

The creator and series have received a great deal of recognition over the
years. Walt Kelly received the National Cartoonist
SocietyReuben Award for 1951 for the strip. The
Fantagraphics Pogo collections were a top votegetter for the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for Favorite Reprint
Graphic Album for 1998.

Works influenced by Pogo

Walt Kelly's work has influenced a number of prominent comic artists.

A tribute strip to Pogo from a local strip, North of Here

In the Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, cartoonist Bill Watterson listed Pogo as one of the three greatest
influences on his own acclaimed strip, Calvin and Hobbes. (The two other strips were Peanuts and
Krazy Kat. In fact, Pogo itself referenced Krazy Kat in many
ways during its run, including a series of strips devoted to examining that
immortal symbol of the earlier strip: the brick.)

Berkeley Breathed once drew a Bloom
County strip which satirized the "abuse" of old characters by advertisers.
In the strip for October 23, 1988, Pogo (complete with striped shirt) was
depicted screaming, "He'p! Walt!" while being dragged off to take up residence
in a commercial.

Jeff Smith has acknowledged that the
artwork and writing style of his Bone comic book series were strongly influenced by Walt
Kelly's style. Smith and Peter Kelly contributed artwork of the cast of Bone
shaking hands with Pogo and Albert for the 1998 "Pogofest" celebration. Smith
is the designer for the new Fantagraphics reprint series.

Jim Henson acknowledged Kelly as a major influence on his
sense of humor, and based some of his early Muppet designs on Kelly drawings. One episode of The Muppet Show's first season included a performance of
"Don't Sugar Me" from Songs of the Pogo.

Wally Wood, a longtime illustrator for Mad, parodied Kelly's characters on several occasions,
most notably in a 1955 issue with "Gopo Gossum."

In the Star Trek: Voyager episode Relativity, the "Pogo
Paradox" is a paradox in temporal mechanics in which one goes back in time with
the purpose of preventing a specific event, only to end up as the reason that
event occurred in the first place. It was referred to as the Pogo Paradox
because of Pogo's famous quote, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

In his 1973 collection 'Kesey’s Garage Sale', novelist Ken Kesey added Pogo
to “Tools From My Chest,” a collection of his influences that had first
appeared in The Last Supplement To 'The Whole Earth Catalogue'. He explained
that Pogo had not made the original list because “I flat forgot.”

Darrin Bell, author of the comic strip Candorville, once made a direct reference to Walt Kelly's
satirizing of Senator Joseph McCarthy in a Sunday strip portraying various
political controversies throughout the vast history of the modern comic
strip.

Author Spider Robinson named a group of professional
"cheerer-uppers" in his Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series The
Cheerful Charlies, after Kelly's parody of the Boy Scouts.
When Les Moore of the Cheerful Charlies was asked by Jake the Narrator how they
got that name, he responded, "maybe because we own the complete works of Walt
Kelly."

René Goscinny was an admirer of Pogo. Since he was very
graphically oriented, too, a plethora of Walt Kelly's ideograms and visual
techniques resurfaced in Astérix (e.g. the word balloons being
written in old Gothic
Fraktur lettering for the Goth and Barbarian characters, and the tax
collector speaking in tax-form-balloons). The mixture of fine political satire
and rough slapstick is used to the same effect.